


you know right well you did

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Assassins Guild, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29118945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: “Ten dollars that you can’t make Dog Botherer cry.”
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	you know right well you did

Ludo and Willis watched somewhat warily as Downey shifted his position from lounging across the sofa to leaning across the glass-topped coffee table.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about. I was wondering if you two would take me up on a bet?”

Ludo nodded. “Sure.”

Willis squinted at the square of moonlight on the floor. “Depends what it is.”

“Oh wait. You mean a bet to determine something else you’re wondering about.” Ludo said, feeling, as he often did when he was drunk, that his brain was operating at two speeds at once.

“Ten dollars that you can’t make Dog Botherer cry.”

Clearer thought flickered across Ludo’s eyes. “Ah. In that case yes.”

“I’ll do it. I have an idea,” Willis said.

-

It was the week before exams and Havelock was fielding the usual bevy of requests to edit or write papers. Some of them he took on, if he thought they were in-good-faith requests for help or a second pair of eyes. It felt good to be recognized as having a way with words, ability to pull out what someone was trying to say from the convoluted thesaurus-referencing morass of what they had committed to the page, and eagle-eyed perception of spelling and punctuation. There was no reciprocity, no benefit to himself social or otherwise for taking on this work, but at least he felt useful.

On Thursday Willis approached him with a stack of loose papers.

“Maybe this is presumptuous, but you have such beautiful turns of phrase and commitment to the work… and I’m worrying that I haven’t done enough work on this, that I’m taking it seriously enough. Could you maybe take a look and see if you could tighten up the prose?”

Vetinari, who had been staring into space, elbows resting on the outdated alchemy textbook that was usually used either as a doorstop or to prop up equipment during labs, accidentally composing a variation on a theme by Coriandolo, blinked at him, waiting for the music to reach a dynamic shift that would allow him to think of something else, and nodded.

Willis put the stack of paper into his hands.

“Hang on—” Vetinari said, counting the pages, “Is all of this— Willis, this is ten thousand words.”

As Willis watched, Vetinari took in the words in front of him. It was a decidedly literary account of assassinations commissioned during the Quimby administration. The text soared high and cut deep and took interesting turns and spirals of argument. It was better than almost anything Havelock had read, never mind anything he had written. His mouth hung slightly open.

“You wrote this?”

“In a bit of a rush. I know you have a much better ear for this kind of thing.”

Vetinari stood transfixed until he reached the end of the essay. He felt tear tracks on his face without having been aware of beginning to cry. He ran a finger across his cheeks. “Um. You misplaced a comma here.”

“Thank you,” Willis said sweetly.

Walking down the hallway ten minutes later, Downey slipped a ten dollar note into Willis’s pocket.

“How long you been working on that?” Downey whispered. 

“Three years.”

“Nice.”

-

At a quarter to midnight on the Tuesday of exam week Havelock was in the corner of the library, hunched over a stack of books on Borogravian politics at the beginning of the previous century, limbs tangled around the chair like a spider mid-shed.

Ludo sat across the table from him diagonally and set down his books. With his other hand he slid a small cup of espresso across the table. The sound of ceramic scraping across wood in the quiet library made Havelock look up.

“For me?” he asked, shocked.

Ludo shrugged and casually walked over to one of the sagging chairs that people tried to sit in to do worked and ended up nearly instantly falling asleep and picked up one of the cushions and handed that over too.

With wary composure, the younger boy settled the cushion between his back and the chair.

Now that there was some relief, the ache in his upper back from the way he had been sitting for hours drifted into his consciousness with so much intensity that he was choking back a vocal sob. 

“Hey, kid, it’s alright.”

Vetinari swallowed. “I know. Just hurts.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Ludo had to look away from his tear-sparkling eyes when Vetinari asked “Who put you up to this?”


End file.
